Arab protests throughout North Africa were unanticipated by the U.S. State Department.

An inability for the U.S. to develop a strategy for Syria has left the government in a catch-up position with rebel forces.

The Obama administration believes the Muslim Brotherhood is a moderating influence in the Arab world.

Attenuated delays and an unwillingness to entertain seriously the development of nuclear weapons in Iran means the Persian mullahs will soon have weapons of mass destruction.

The systematic reduction of our naval fleet means, in effect, that the U.S. cannot protect its interests and allies in the Taiwan Straits, the South China Sea or the Sea of Japan.

Federal Reserve easing along with the fiscal deficit will at some point result in an inflationary tsunami.

The withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan has led to a temporary political vacuum which is likely to be filled by the Taliban.

Seventy-two percent of Afro American children are born out-of-wedlock.

The Leave It To Beaver family is gone, a distant memory of an earlier period.

The best selling history text in the nation is Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of The United States, which is a contentious view of competing interests in our national past.

American students came in next to last on the OECD science and math tests.

President Obama has exercised Executive Order more than any other president.

The debt increased by $5 trillion over the last four years.

These are randomly selected facts and opinions that lead inextricably to one conclusion: national decline. I am not one of the declinists who believe in determinism, nor am I a tired old man who is going through a lamentation of “the way things used to be.” But there is a theme and it is a worrisome theme. America is not what it once was – the great colossus that strode the globe as a force to be emulated. The task before us is a recognition of the issues we face and an examination of manifold ways to address them.

Herbert London is President of the London Center for Policy Research, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of the book The Transformational Decade (University Press of America). You can read all of Herb London’s commentaries at www.londoncenter.org

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